Graduation season—that time of year when we get to celebrate academic achievements, watch with anticipation as the graduates move on to life’s next step and hear about all the students being banned from prom and graduation for dress-code violations.

As a jolting end to that list, we’re hearing more stories of students who are being punished near the close of the school year for their clothes or hair. These instances are typically about female students (because let’s face it, dress codes are pretty much only about women’s fashion and beauty), and more often than not about students of color.

Earlier this month, we learned of black teen twins in Massachusetts who were banned from prom and extracurricular clubs for wearing braided hair extensions. A popular protective style for naturals, the braids were said to be against the school’s rules against hair extensions, distracting hairstyles and hair taller than two inches in height.

Knowing what we know about black hair growth—that tightly coiled or kinky hair grows up and out instead of down, and that the use of extensions like box braids allows for healthy hair growth—this rule sounded extremely targeted towards students of color, specifically black students. The school has since suspended all punishments and promised to rework the policies, but the larger concern is cultural education and addressing the biases that bred school policies targeting black students.

………………………………………………
In popular culture, black natural hair is “on trend.” Mainstream media has picked up on the perceived coolness of some types of black hair and we see an increase in representation. However, for many black women, our hair has been anything but cool for the majority of our lives. Regardless of the celebration we may see now, there is a lifetime of hate and pain wrapped around our natural hair texture and the way we have been treated because of it.

To be told that your natural self (a “self” that many of us have spent the majority of our lives learning to love and accept) is a fad, is extreme, or is exaggerated can be dehumanizing. Where is the code banning blonde hair? We would be up in arms at someone’s personal preference of acceptable beauty being made into a hard and fast rule for all women to follow.

This is what is being asked of black girls and women—to take a cultural standard as rule and change ourselves to fit in. TSA still pats down my hair every single time I travel—all while I am watching white women with buns and up ’dos walk through untouched

Man weaves, more formally referred to as cranial prosthesis, hair replacement units or hair systems, are a non-surgical procedure to help men who’ve lost their hair — be it through just balding or thinning, alopecia or cancer treatments — “regain” hair.

Man weaves are designed for most hair types including Caucasian, Latino and African-American/black, and have been growing in popularity over the past two to five years. In most cases, man weaves are 100 percent human hair, although some are blends with synthetic hair. Don’t think of them as fake hair, think alternative hair.

Not only have man weaves been providing a cover for balding men but among African-American men, the trend has been injecting even more cash into the already booming black haircare industry.

According to Mintel, which compiles data on the beauty industry, the black hair care category is expanding with new brand and product entrants to the market, which is causing expenditure increases. Black consumers were estimated to have spent about $2.56 billion on hair care products in 2016.

Mintel forecasts that expenditures will keep growing.

The company also notes that these figures are missing specific data on weaves and extensions but “if all of those things were to be taken into consideration. … expenditures could reach a whopping half trillion dollars.”

What it costs to get a man weave

A single installation of a man weave, including special custom made hair units, can cost from $275 to $800, so it’s safe to say hair suppliers, hair stylists and barbers such as Wade Menendez are being kept busy.

Menendez, 34, has been a barber since 2004 and began installing man weaves about two years ago. He says that when he first started and for much of 2016, he’d spend about $1,500 a month purchasing man weaves, doing just a few clients weekly. Now, he says he spends $16,000-18,000 monthly because of his increasing number of clients. He says he dedicates his Tuesdays and most nights solely to man weaves.

“It’s been really great,” Menendez says. “At one point, it was like in three months I made $130,000 just people coming in, flying in from everywhere. It’s been crazy.”

Thug has become such a ubiquitous dog whistle for a certain type of uncomfortable Blackness — and by “certain type of uncomfortable Blackness” I mean “all Blackness” — that the whistle is no longer necessary. Nothing is coded, nothing concealed, nothing cloaked. Those who use it in this context can’t even feign to deny anymore that they’re employing it to evoke a certain type of imagery; that they’re specifically attempting to a stoke fear of a Black person (usually male, but occasionally female) whose appearance, actions, and attitudes exude a latent criminality. They say thug, and we’re supposed to immediately picture anyone ranging from Colin Kaepernick (because tattoos and uppity) to Kanye West (because Taylor). Which is a great piece of semantic propaganda, as the arbitrariness of that distinction creates an ever-shifting goalpost where anyone Black could be a thug. The only immovable criteria is them perceiving us as a threat. Equally and perhaps even more importantly, it also hides their thuggishness in plain sight; criminalizing sagging jeans and braided hair and Homewood while the thuggiest thugs are actually in boat shoes and Patagonia fleeces in the Hamptons.

And perhaps no single public figure embodies this dichotomy better than Jared Kushner, the thuggish ruggish backbone of the Trump family. Even Donald, the Cheeto-tinted charlatan that he is, has a certain translucent shamelessness to him that prevents even the dumbest of us from regarding him as anything but a man who plays dirty and embraces dirt. He’s a shitheel who knows he’s a shitheel and wants everyone to know it too. Kushner, on the other hand, looks and sounds and dresses and walks like someone who goes to Trader Joe’s for the ambiance. He’s a Subaru Outback with sentience. The kid whose nickname in high school was “Butt Plug” or “Asthma Boy.” If Donald Trump was born on third base, his bitch-ass was born in J Crew.

He’s also a slumlord. The publisher of a tabloid with a tuxedo. Completely ensconced in the criminal activities of his father-in-law’s family. Oh, and he might have committed treason. He looks like he should be asking some server somewhere for gluten-free ice chips, but he’s actually Avon Barksdale with a Lululemon charge card.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel hinted Sunday that recent tensions at the G7 meeting — where President Trump clashed with world leaders about the Paris climate accord — made her realize time-tested global alliances are failing.

“The times in which we could rely fully on others, they are somewhat over,” Merkel said in a Munich campaign event for her fourth term.

“This is what I experienced in the last few days. We Europeans must really take our destiny into our own hands.”

Merkel did not name a specific leader or event that brought her grim epiphany.

But it was clear what she was referring to: The previous day’s tense G7 summit in Sicily, which ended with Trump trampling on agreements with other allied nations.

Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin, facing an ethics complaint about the unusually low purchase price of the Anchorage mansion he’s living in, took to Twitter on Saturday to personally attack a journalist who has been reporting about the controversy.

Bevin called Courier-Journal reporter Tom Loftus a “sick man” for allegedly being “caught sneaking” around Bevin’s home and property.

Bevin’s tweet, which said that Loftus was “removed by state police,” was in reference to an instance two months ago — in March — when Loftus went to the governor’s new Anchorage mansion, according to Bevin spokeswoman Amanda Stamper. The governor ended the tweet with the hashtag “#PeepingTom.”
The Courier-Journal rejected the claim that Loftus was “caught sneaking” around or that he was removed from the property. “The claims are untruthful and absurd,” Courier-Journal Executive Editor Joel Christopher said.

Loftus himself had reported in a news story in March that he had gone to the residence, where he was “met by state police Trooper Mark Treadway, a member of the executive security detail, who declined to say who lived in the house and said it was private property.”

Loftus said Saturday the only time he’s set foot on the Anchorage property was in March. He said he and a photographer parked on a side street. While the photographer stayed on the road, Loftus walked up the driveway, planning to knock on the front door to ask questions about who lived there.

Loftus said he began walking up the drive, greeted a workman and identified himself. The workman directed Loftus to one of several outbuildings on the property, Loftus wrote in an email.

Both James Comey and the Republican Party are learning an important lesson: never abet a monster to protect an institution.

If it weren’t for the continuing insanity surrounding the White House, the revelation that James Comey knowingly highlighted false “intelligence” planted by Russia in order to protect the FBI’s sources and institutional credibility would be the scandal of the year. Given that Comey’s press conference on Clinton in the last week of the election almost certainly tipped it in Trump’s favor, that would make the Russian plant one of the most brazenly successful hostile intelligence operations of the last century.

Then-FBI Director James Comey knew that a critical piece of information relating to the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s email was fake — created by Russian intelligence — but he feared that if it became public it would undermine the probe and the Justice Department itself, according to multiple officials with knowledge of the process.

As a result, Comey acted unilaterally last summer to publicly declare the investigation over — without consulting then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch — while at the same time stating that Clinton had been “extremely careless” in her handling of classified information. His press conference caused a firestorm of controversy and drew criticism from both Democrats and Republicans.

Comey’s actions based on what he knew was Russian disinformation offer a stark example of the way Russian interference impacted the decisions of the highest-level US officials during the 2016 campaign.

I’m sure it seemed like the best move for Comey at the time: Clinton seemed assured of victory, and it was more important to him to protect the FBI’s institutional assets and preserve it from Republican accusations of favoritism once Clinton won.

Obviously, that’s not how things turned out. Now the consequences are dire.

Europe must act swiftly to shield itself from erratic and incompetent leadership in Washington.
by James Bruno
May 28, 2017

As Donald Trump finishes his first overseas trip as president, a nine-day whirlwind tour of Saudi Arabia, Israel, the Vatican, a G-7 meeting in Italy, and a NATO summit in Brussels, policymakers back home fret whether they witnessed a diplomatic drive-by shooting more than a series of state visits. Europeans — having sweated through their own elections threatened by right-wing nationalism — were justifiably anxious about receiving an erratic U.S. president who has dismissed NATO as obsolete, the EU as irrelevant, and the Russian threat as not credible. As America wallows in mass hallucination in the era of Trump, a case can be made for a containment doctrine by our allies — to protect themselves from the United States.

George Kennan, the father of the containment doctrine against the Soviet Union, wrote, “who can say with assurance that the strong light still cast by the Kremlin on the dissatisfied peoples of the western world is not the powerful afterglow of a constellation which is in actuality on the wane?” Seven decades on, America may be the 21st century’s death star, a great body casting a bright glow, but whose moral core is dead, whose political and social dynamics risk exploding at any time, thereby endangering its partners.

A mere four months into his administration, the new president is saddled seemingly daily with new scandals and a stalled legislative agenda. President Trump has been dismissive of the post-World War II security order that helped bring down communism, averted another global conflagration, and stimulated prosperity through liberal trade. He’s dissed our closest allies while cozying up to authoritarian strongmen in Russia, Turkey and Egypt. And he refused to commit the U.S. to collective defense under NATO — a bedrock of the transatlantic alliance. His secretary of state is the phantom captain of a ghost ship; key department positions go unfilled and officials fly blind lacking guidance, while Rex Tillerson has missed meetings with visiting heads of state and other foreign officials, has little contact with his own bureaucracy, and treats the news media as if it were plague-infested.

Trump badly needs a change in narrative. But he’s not going to get one.

With Russia scandals looming over his personal family, his policy agenda in tatters and his main defender Fox News cratering in viewership, Trump is blaming his communications apparatus and considering a major overhaul just a few months into his presidency. His approval rating sits at an average of 39%, a record low for this point in a presidency–and shockingly low given the state of polarization in the modern electorate.

Under normal circumstances, the media would be inclined to grant him one. There are few things Americans like better than a comeback kid, a story of trial and redemption. To the annoyance of media critics on both left and right, troubled and even disgraced politicians and celebrities are often granted new leases on public life. Presidents feeling the pinch of high unpopularity are given innumerable chances to better their standing: when the public soured on Bill Clinton and Democrats took a beating in 1994, Clinton stormed back to success on the back of a media eager for a counternarrative. At least until Katrina and even afterward, seemingly every week of the George W. Bush presidency was supposed to be the beginning of the cowboy president’s return to grace.

This is partly because the media and the public tire of boring narratives. By the same token, successful and popular individuals from Washington to Hollywood to the sports stadium are scandalized and laid low simply to create excitement and remove their shine. Every month the press seemed to uncover something that might have been “Obama’s Katrina.” It’s just how life the in 24-hour media cycle works. The troubled are lifted up, even as the mighty are dragged down.

But Trump won’t likely get the benefit of that dynamic. The one great exception to the redemptive narrative is the unrepentant bully. Mark Sanford and post-Lewinsky Bill Clinton were able to survive by virtue of public prostration and at least the appearance of shame and humility. Even Richard Nixon regained some respect and public acclaim as an elder statesman, but only after a long period in the wilderness.

Black Girls Rock!

Flickr Photos

Potus Takes Oath of Office

Flotus & Daughters at Great Wall of China

My Brothers Keeper

AFRO PUFFS

Most Adorable Shoe Stealer

Six Little Babies

Fatherhood

Even though 3Chics Politico is written and curated by three women: Ametia, Rikyrah, and SouthernGirl2, I must nominate this as one of the most engaging blogs I've found. Devoted to politics and culture, these three shine a light on contemporary life with humor and spirit.